Religious Studies

The history evidences: the Local Churches that were historically associated with earthly empires were uninterested in the canonical establishment of local churches under their jurisdictions, and therefore usually granted autocephaly to churches only under the pressure of historic circumstances. No exception is the Moscow Patriarchate, which has incorporated the Orthodox Church in Ukraine since 1686.

Ukrainian Orthodoxy and Ukrainian society suffer from division. The majority of Ukrainian Orthodox believers belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. The rest of the Orthodox community of Ukraine has chosen a different path of self-proclaimed autocephaly. However, neither the first nor the second path is optimal for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine to date.

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The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP) asked Metropolitan Volodymyr (Slobodan) to not retire and not give into pressure put on him in relation to the kidnapping of two nuns, the official site of the Kyivan Patriarchate reports.

“If this information is true and connected to Metropolitan Volodymyr (Slobodan), as it has been several times before, pressure will be put him to resign from his post as Primate of the UOC-MP. The Kyivan Patriarchate calls for Metropolitan Volodymyr to in no way to give into this unlawful pressure,” says a statement by the UOC-KP.

The UOC-KP calls on the bishops of the UOC-MP to protect their Primate.

The Kyivan Patriarchate asks for the president and government officials to verify information about the pressure on the metropolitan and in the case that it is confirmed, to protect him and the church led by him from undue interference in the statutes.

“After all, the intervention threatens church and public peace, causes resentment and resistance, which can be especially bad on the eve of the 1025th anniversary of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus-Ukraine,” says the statement.